Tag Archives: Photography

Tom and Greg are on life-changing adventures this week so no new episode of the Bowery Boys: New York City History. But there is something awaiting you in the Bowery Boys feed this week — one very New York City-centric episode of The First: Stories of Invention, the Bowery Boys spinoff hosted by Greg Young.

With 16 episodes now released, The First has become a sort of menagerie of innovation, a set of eureka! moments within a cabinet of curiosities, a collection of stories about the history of mankind’s most interesting inventions. As there’s no Bowery Boys episode week, why not dive into The First and give a couple past episodes a try?

From the automobile to the rocket ship, from chewing gum to the TV dinner, from the first face in a photograph to the first voice on the telephone, the world has been forever changed by impossible technologies and startling ideas. But these inventions do not always make the world a better place.

These are the stories of The First, a podcast exploring the history of human innovation, focusing less on iconic inventors and more on the forgotten geniuses and everyday people that were responsible for bringing us the tools of the modern world.

2. However there are a great many ways to listen! Here are a sampling of streaming and downloading sites you can try. Most of these are for iOS and Android so search around to find the player that is right for you:

New episodes of the Bowery Boys: New York City History return on July 21. And The First comes back with brand new episodes on July 28.

02: Dorothy Catherine Draper is a truly forgotten figure in American history. She was the first woman to ever sit for a photograph — a daguerrotype, actually, in the year 1840, upon the rooftop of the school which would become New York University..

The circumstances that got her to this position were rather unique. She was the older sister of a professor named John William Draper, and she assisted him in his success and fame even when it seemed a detriment to her. The Drapers worked alongside Samuel Morse in the period following his invention of the telegraph.

The legendary portrait was taken when Miss Draper was a young woman but a renewed interest in the image in the 1890s brought the now elderly matron a bit of late-in-life recognition.

FEATURING Tales from the earliest days of photography and walk through Green-Wood Cemetery!

— Big Bowery Boys book news! The release date for Adventures In Old New York got pushed back to June a couple weeks but for the best reason ever — the book is enormous, almost 500 pages, and full of spectacular images. It’s really shaping up to become an attractive, entertaining and usable book. We cannot wait for you to see it.

— The Tale of Belvedere: Meanwhile I was featured on a recent episode of the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Castle, talking about the history of Belvedere Castle, the dreamlike ‘folly’ in Central Park. It was Episode 3.13, originally broadcast on March 31. You can catch it in reruns, watch it on-demand or on iTunes!

Below: Central Park’s fairytale weather station in a postcard dated sometime early 1900s

Courtesy New York Public Library

Some links that you may find of interest;

— Treasure Hunt: Where in New York City you can find beautiful examples of Gaustavino’s amazing tile work — from grand spaces (or, more specifically, Grand Central) to hallowed halls (the Cathedral of St. John the Divine). [Gothamist]

Coming up tomorrow: The new Bowery Boys podcast. Tom goes on the road to find the food of the past!

And now, in honor of tonight’s historical Democratic presidential debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a look at some less volatile events there over the years. (Yes, these are pictures during times of war. Modern campaigning is tough!):

These images are all courtesy Library of Congress, dated between 1910-1920

Launch of the USS New Mexico — April 1917

A few images of Japan’s Admiral Togo Heihachiro touring the Navy Yard in August 1911:

The daredevil antics of Nellie Bly (subject of our last podcast) proved that investigative journalism could prove a benefit to society while also selling stacks of newspapers (specifically, those of Joseph Pullitzer’s New York World).

A few months after Bly’s trip to Blackwell’s Island, Jacob Riis published his first investigation for the New York Sun, revealing the wretched conditions of New York’s worst slum neighborhoods by employing an experimental technology — flash photography. The startling pictures, by Riis and a team of other photographers, were at first rendered in line drawings, but the effect was nevertheless profound.

In the Museum of the City of New York’s fascinating new show on Riis — Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half (on view until March 20, 2016) — we get to see his photos on an intimate scale, in original prints, stereographs and glass negatives, their subjects trapped forever in meager situations.

The pictures are more than social activism; they’re history themselves, the first flash photography ever to be used in this fashion. Riis was showing New Yorkers a vivid glimpse of poverty — orphans in the gutter, street gangs in the alleyway — using a technique that few were regularly exposed to apart from portraiture.

Riis never considered himself a professional photographer. Later in his career, he even farmed out the photographic work to others as he focused on writing and social activism. And yet modern photojournalism wouldn’t really be what it was today without his first forays into slums, opium dens and beer halls with his bulky and costly equipment. His early work influenced an entire field of social photographers seeking to prove the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” (a phrasewhich debutednear the end of Riis’ lifetime),

With that in mind, it seems shocking that Revealing New York’s Other Half is the first museum retrospective of Riis’ work in over fifty years, culling from their own massive collection of photographs and papers from the Library of Congress and New York Public Library. The show is complete but not over-crowded, starting with artifacts from his private life, then methodically spanning his career.

The Museum’s show also pays tribute to the 125th anniversary of Riis’ How The Other Half Lives, a landmark examination of New York’s lower classes which provoked many city improvements in housing and labor.

I was particularly taken with the original books and newspaper clippings of Riis’ work. We’re used to engaging closely with older photography, presented relatively largely and with the ability to study detail. But his first impactful images weren’t actual photos at all, but pencil engravings of his photos. It would take many years after Riis’ debut for newspaper printing processes to effectively reproduce photographic images.

One very useful feature of the exhibit is a large map indicating the many locations in Manhattan from Riis’ photographs. He’s principally associated with the old Five Points neighborhood (mostly demolished due to work), but his work spans the entire island. In fact many of his most famous photographs were actually taken a short distance south of Five Points in the slum called Gotham Court.

Yale University has sprung a beautiful present onto the Internet — a searchable databaseof over 170,000 public-domain photographs created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information, documenting the aftermath of America of the Great Depression and World War II. The photos, dating from between the years 1935 to 1945, include of the greatest American photographers from the period (such as Gordon Parks, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange).

These images aren’t really new; they’ve been available at the Library of Congress for many years. I’ve even ran a couple of these on the blog before. But Yale has done an outstanding job of sorting and cataloging. Their site even comes with a map if you want to look at images from a particular area of the country.

Take a look at this particular images from New York City during this period, then head over to the database and lose yourself inside these captivating, sometimes harrowing pictures. Thank you Yale!

June 1941 New York City, East Side, Sunday morning, photographer Marion Post Walcott

December 1941 :Children playing, New York City: Photographer Arthur Rothstein

October 1942 “High school Victory Corps. Learning the rudiments of advancing on an enemy will prove valuable to these boys if they are called to join their older brothers in the armed forces. This is part of the “commando” training given in physical education courses at Flushing High School, Queens, New York” Photographer William Perlitch

January 1943 “Manhattan Beach Coast Guard training station. The gymnasium is one of the busiest places at Manhattan Beach Coast Guard training station. The physical education program is handled by many noted exponents of boxing, wrestling, track and judo. Paul (Tiny) Wyatt, one-time leading contender for heavyweight boxing honors, is shown sparring with Hart Kraeten, former Golden Gloves champ.” Photographer Roger Smith

January 1943 “New York, New York. Child on Mott Street on Sunday” Photograph by Marjory Collins

January 1943 “Italian grocer in the First Avenue market at Tenth Street” Photograph by Marjory Collins

March 1943 “Rockefeller Plaza, exhibit [for] United Nations by OWI, New York, N.Y. Between photographic displays is [the] Atlantic charter in frame with transmitters at each end and where voices of Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-Shek are heard each half hour; surrounded by statues of the four freedoms.” Photograph by Marjory Collins

March 1943 “New York, New York. Times Square on a rainy day” Photographer John Vachon

April 1943 “A follower of the late Marcus Garvey who started the “Back to Africa” movement” Photographer Gordon Parks

The photograph above (officially called “Brooklyn Bridge showing painters on suspenders”) is perhaps the best-known image taken by Eugene de Salignac, a city employee who took municipal photography of most major New York structures during the early 20th century.

His work had never appeared in a gallery until 2007, almost 65 years after his death. His exquisite eye rendered otherwise ordinary shots with a captivating grandeur; this was certainly beyond the call of duty of his responsibilities for the Department of Bridges (later named the Department of Plant and Structures) for which he worked from 1906 to 1934. In all, it’s estimated the city owns about 20,000 glass-plate negatives taken by de Salignac.

On September 22, 1914, de Salignac headed to the Brooklyn Bridge to observe workers painting the bridge’s steel-wire suspension. Perhaps a bit inspired by modern artistic photography of the day, the normally workaday photographer returned to the bridge a couple weeks later, on October 7.

To quote Aperture: “The image was obviously planned, as evidenced by the relaxed nature of these fearless men who appear without their equipment and are joined, uncustomarily, by their supervisor.”

It was, generally speaking, an unspectacular day for the 31-year-old bridge. It’s believed that the original color of the Brooklyn Bridge was ‘Rawlins Red’ although by this time, the vibrant color might have been replaced with the less dramatic ‘Brooklyn Bridge Tan.’ Can you imagine what this image would have looked like in color?

I would like to think de Salignac took some inspiration from photographers like Paul Strand who were beginning to see New York City as a set of geometric abstracts. The spirit of this photograph echoes into the work of Berenice Abbott and especially Lewis Hine. In 1932, while de Salignac was still employed by the city, Hine was hired to document the construction of the RCA Building. In one photo, workers were posed in a way that eventually became quite iconic**:

Most likely, none of those other photographers saw de Salignac’s Brooklyn Bridge picture. It was essentially lost among the thousands of archives pictures until the 1980s. For his first film for PBS, Ken Burns used the photograph in his Brooklyn Bridge documentary which went on to snag an Academy Award nomination. In 2007, de Salignac was belatedly honored with an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

De Salignac returned to the bridge to several times to catch more workers in the act of maintaining the bridge. Such as this photograph the following year:

Want to get lost for an hour or so? Check on the New York Municipal Archives vast trove of Eugene de Salignac photographs directly.

**This famous picture was attributed first to Lewis Hine, then to Charles C Ebbets. Corbis officially lists the photographer as ‘unknown’. Thank you to Michael Lorenzini for pointing this out!

A particularly haunting image — the caption “Junior sea breeze for sick babies — 64th Street and Avenue A.” Circa 1895, this was taken in a park at 64th and today’s York Avenue, the area of Rockefeller University. On this 1899 map, you can see that the future Sutton Place and York Avenue were still referred to as Avenue A then. By the 20th century, the lettered avenues were so synonymous with poorer immigrants that the upper portions were renamed to appeal to wealthier residents. (Picture courtesy Museum of the City of New York)Food Fight: Junior’s Restaurant, the legendary Brooklyn restaurant on Flatbush Avenue, rejects lavish cash offers to remain in the same spot. “This is Junior’s identity, is this building. This is the one where I came on my first dates. It’s where my family spent most of their waking hours … Not the one down the street, not the one below 20 stories of condos. This one.” [Curbed]

Reinventing the Sandwich: The rise and fall of the panini in New York City [Gothamist]

Sky High: The staggering development of Manhattan over 350 years, courtesy an extraordinary cross-section of bird’s eye illustrations. [Gizmodo]

The Glow of the City: A look at the dreamlike photography of pictoralist Alvin Langdon Coburn.[Ephemeral New York]

Beautiful Trash: And another photographer from a different era — Mike Frey and his black-and-white take of New York in the 1970s. [Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York]

I Want To Go To There: And speaking of great photographs, my favorite Instagram account of the moment is by Rolando Pujol who finds the most remarkable examples of Americana restaurant signage in New York. I want to eat ice cream at all of these places. Follow him there or check out his blog. [The Retrologist]

Meanwhile, if you’re watching The Knick or Boardwalk Empire, follow along with me on Twitter (@boweryboys) for some extra trivia about the historical eras being depicted. I’m trying to avoid actual spoilers at all possible, although sometimes history itself provides the spoiler as with the murder of this prominent mob boss. Here’s a few example of Tweets for this weekend’s episodes:

Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh (aka the ‘Sundance Kid‘) were notorious Western outlaws of the 1890s-1900s who were rendered into romantic icons courtesy Robert Redford and Paul Newman. I did not realize these two scalawags had any connection to New York City until I watched this clip from tonight’s PBS American Experience documentary on the adventurous criminals (fast forward to minute 40:

Here is the photo of Longabaugh and Etta Place, taken at De Young’s photo studio at 815 Broadway:

This is not New York City related in anyway, but I just loved finding this headline in an 1898 issue of the Salt Lake City Herald

Stop what you’re doing and go play around with the New York Public Library‘s addictive Stereograminator, which gives you their collection of stereograph photography and the ability to animate them, emulating the ‘3D effect’ audiences who first viewed them would have experienced. Go here for the fun.

I’m becoming slowly obsessed with the Life Magazine work of photographer Leonard McCombe, whose colorful images of midtown Manhattan render the busy streets with a warm, vibrant palette. Last week I posted another Mccombe picture of this particular street corner that perfectly captured the era. But this image manages to seem incredibly modern.

The place? Fifth Avenue, near Rockefeller Center.

The year? 1960.

By the way, perhaps McCombe’s most famous photograph, taken in 1949, was of Texas cowboy Clarence Hailey Long, the inspiration for the Marlboro Man.

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